The Goddess' Perspective:
I had a general idea of what happened around the Child because of the communication crystal.
I enjoyed being able to keep watch over him and witness his progression.
His progression was indeed an entertaining sight to see.
The Child progressed at stunning rates. His cruelty, his adaptability in situations, and his overall fighting skills have drastically increased since he left my realm.
I was routinely impressed by his use of source energy too.
The Child had developed maneuvers close to those that I had created with electrical source energy. This feat was absurd, a mere child, almost matching the movement speed of a Goddess.
I sharply sighed out of honest confusion and thought that the other place the Child continued to impress me was his ruthless disassociation from his victims.
The Child seemed to calculate every single life he took yet left the process unfinished in his mind. The feelings he garnered from mercilessly slaughtering people were never processed, leaving them dangling in the void inside him.
It seemed to me that this might be a dangerous practice.
Although I enjoyed watching how brutally and cruelly he murdered the scum of the other Tribes. Keeping his emotions within was never going to assist him in his mission.
I could communicate with the Child. However, I believed this would have been an effort in vain because of my inability to relate.
I would let the Child proceed as he is and hope he agrees within himself.
~~~
Cato Emberson's Perspective:
As I exited the colony, the tunnel shrunk and started to incline.
I had been to the surface twice in my lifetime. Once was at the northernmost tip of the continent, an area accessible because of the tunnels connecting to the Fire Tribe village.
The second time was through a different exit near the village. I went with my father, and we only stayed briefly on the surface to watch the sunset before scurrying back into the tunnels.
Leaving now would be my third time on the surface.
'I have to get used to the actual sun on my skin as I travel.'
Reaching the end of the exit tunnel and seeing the bright light shining in, I took a deep breath.
The cold wind hit my face as I stood in a vast desert stretching for as long and wide as I could see.
The frequent use of carriages to transport supplies made a singular path in the sand right as I exited the tunnel.
I took in my surroundings to conclude nothing new.
I was in a desert; there was one way to go.
So I started my trek down the straight path towards what I hoped to be more Beast Tribe villages.
As I walked, I thought about many things.
I spent some time reminiscing over my time in the Goddess' realm and the dome-shaped training room.
Quickly being overrun by sadness, I decided against reminiscing for the time being, and instead, I decided to try and train.
I attempted to force myself into a dreamlike hallucination while I was still moving forward.
It took an immense amount of concentration to cultivate with your eyes open. Having the visual stimulus immediately ruined the meditative focus.
I was attempting to cultivate with my eyes open and while I was walking.
The only way to accomplish this was to force a hallucination and then use the back of my mind to cultivate and walk. All so that I could focus on simulating fights in the forefront of my brain.
My body temperatures rose and dove as I continued to walk.
The attempt to cultivate would leave me stained in sweat. At the same time, the gusts of wind that roared through the desert would leave me in an icy chill.
After around an hour of fruitless walking, I gave up on cultivating and moving as the sun started to set to my left.
The temperature dropped drastically after the sun had started to go down. I needed to stay warm and ignited my feet in flames.
The fire kept my lower half warm while my cloak provided safety for my upper body.
I continued forward as my feet left scorch marks behind me.
Cursing at my inability to force a hallucination, I started to think about the colony.
I had mercilessly killed every single person present. None of them were allowed a chance to explain themselves. To admit whether they attacked the Fire Tribe or not.
'Did I genuinely hold this much power? I surely held power, but did that mean I held the right to end lives?'
'Does power grant one the right?'
I thought back to the corpses of my fallen tribemates. I thought of the ash figures I inspected throughout the houses in the colony.
'I am merely human; I am not a reaper of death.'
An unfamiliar low voice cropped up in the back of my head, asking a question.
'Are you an omen of death? Perhaps on your way to becoming a Reaper?'
'No, what? A human will never become a Reaper, no matter how many lives they take.'
'Well then,' the grave voice changed their question, 'what is a Reaper?'
Unable to come up with an answer immediately, I received the last message from the voice in my head.
'I advise you figure this out.' It crudely stated before fading away into the depths of my thoughts.
I continued to walk as I thought about all the wrong things.
'What in the Goddess' name was that voice?'
'Was that me?'
'A deeper subconscious version?'
I suddenly stopped walking and dropped my forehead into my palm.
I had no answers.
Sighing, I looked up from my hand at the now night sky.
Clouds were abundant in the sky and blocked most of the stars. However, I was able to see a few of them and was pleasantly surprised by their brightness.
Shifting my gaze back towards the straight path, I sighed once more and continued on my way.
As I strolled down the path, my eyelids began to grow heavier, and my pace slowed. Noticing my change in demeanor, I wanted to cultivate to regain some of my energy, but I didn't want to stop moving.
Continuing to walk, I started to think of life-threatening battle scenarios. The stress-inducing situations caused my body to perk up and become more alert.
I had closed my eyes to picture the scenarios but had started to open them. As I continued to walk forward, I attempted to imagine an enemy charging towards me, his weapon drawn.
I was able to form an outline of the enemy as I walked at a leisurely pace. I continued to flush out the details of my enemy after repeated trial and error.
Abruptly, I was able to form a complete enemy that charged towards me as I walked forwards in the desert. I could almost see the sand shifting beneath his weight as he charged towards me.
Impressed with the form of my enemy, I continued to imagine his attack pattern, letting him deliver a lethal blow before disappearing and reappearing a few meters in front of me.
As the enemy continued to attack and evaporate, I focused on cultivating; the trickiest part.
My cultivation began to succeed as the sand before me turned into a deep, clear blue with tentacles of electricity dancing below us.
The summoned enemy continued to attack and evaporate as I walked through the now blue desert expanse.
Shifting my focus back onto my enemy, attempting to let cultivation autopilot for a second, I dodged his attack and disintegrated him away with a blast of fire.
Right as I felt the blast of source energy leave my body, a cool sensation spread throughout me.
The rushing of the desert winds faded as I continued to walk forward. However, this time when the enemy came towards me, he was even more lifelike.
When I went to dodge his attack, I moved out of the way, but my physical body kept trudging through the desert.
'Holy shit, did I do it?'
I attempted to imagine three enemies all charging me. As my first summon evaporated, three more easily took its place and continued the onslaught.
I smiled a big toothy grin at the three charging enemies in utter pride of my success.
I continued to walk and slice my way through numerous battle scenarios in my head.
Occasionally, an enemy would have the same face as a colony member I had briefly seen, and this would throw my focus off. It felt as if the memories I shared with them were burning a large hole in my soul.
After a while, I had grown fatigued, mentally and physically.
Although my hallucination enemies did not bleed, I was sure my blue energy pool would have looked much like the Goddess' realm if they had.
When I stopped training in my mind, the sun had risen, and I was still walking along the only path in view.
I paused briefly to inspect the progress I had made on my energy pool.
Upon quick inspection, it seemed my Soulflame had grown to roughly the size of the three-story building in the Fire Tribe, making it around ten meters tall.
My energy pool—if you could even call it a pool—looked more like an ocean. The electricity coursing throughout the pale blue liquid looked like schools of fish swimming in their home.
Also, surrounding the perimeter of my energy lake were roughly three hundred silhouettes stationed in lines. There were two silhouettes in every column, and they were shoulder to shoulder surrounding the lake.
I stared in disbelief at the smokey gray silhouettes that I had seen once before.
Opening my eyes and revealing the desert, I took a deep breath and reinspected my energy lake.
'Nope, still there.'
I attempted this a few more times, hoping that I was hallucinating before concluding that these silhouettes now lived around my energy pool.
'Well,' I thought, 'at least they're figurative in a sense,' seeking some emotion to replace the guilt that had appeared in my throat.
Swallowing, I started up my trek again. I wasn't sure how long I would have to walk or where I would end up, and I doubt the Goddess knew either.
The low, scratchy voice returned once more, 'You only need to go where there are people, right, Reaper?'